Days gone by
by Floopygirl
Summary: Mini!OTP. It gets easier as they grow older.


Pairings: mini!OTP

Spoilers: Fragile Balance

Disclaimer: not mine

A/N: This is very sappy and not very original. Um.

* * *

They have a little place up east in Wyoming which they escape to on weekends and holidays - Sam flatly refused to have another cabin in Minnesota and though he grumbled a little at the time, he can see her point. Besides, he doesn't miss the long, cold winters.

The cottage - not a cabin - is about half a mile away from a river, but he doesn't fish anymore. Sitting all day with an unbaited rod in his hand was an old man's game, or so he tells himself, so he and Sam swim and kayak and splash around in the water until their skin burns. Even though Sam buys factor 40 lotion every year they always forget to reapply it every two hours, or get distracted when they do reapply it...

They moved away from Colorado after high school, figuring that staying round would result in too many complications as they grew older. Arizona is bakingly hot in summer, but that's why you have air conditioning. Besides, they've both lived and worked in hot climates before.

Sam teaches biochemistry at one of the state's universities and he's chief of their local fire station. It's paperwork hell sometimes but the rest of the job makes up for it: he may not be saving the world any more but he's still saving lives. Some days he doesn't even think about the ice-cold rush and surge of nausea that kicked him in the guts every time he stepped through the gate.

He worries about Sam, a little - she should have had the glittering career that he and Dad always wanted for her. He can still remember the set look on her face when she told him she'd decided not to major in physics. He understands her reasoning: Colonel Carter had quite the reputation in her field, and the last thing they want is for anyone to ask questions about the blonde look-alike who shares her aptitude for the subject, but still. He used to argue and argue with her until he realised just how much rehashing her decision was hurting her, and that she really wasn't going to budge. Now she swears that she loves teaching and is grateful for the time to do her research and lack of pressure. He hugs her tightly and doesn't comment when she curls up on the sofa and scribbles wormhole calculations on a pad of paper.

They have a thoroughbred Alsatian that Sam paid a fortune for, and a crazy mutt that she saw at the local shelter and couldn't bear to leave there. Jack constantly warns her that she's spoiling them, walks them morning and night whenever he's off-duty and slips them beefsteak on the sly.

Fifteen years ago he used to spend his weekends and evenings drowning everything in beer, raging to himself that he deserved more than this, cursing Thor and his absent team for condemning him to a normal life. Having Sam turn up at school one day made things worse, for a while. Now they have that normal life that he so derided, and it's good. They go to the movies and hold hands, throw barbeques for the neighbours where they struggle to keep the dogs away from the food, sit out on the porch late at night and stare up at the stars. If he asked her, he knows that Sam could point out all the star systems they've visited, but he doesn't, not any more.

Sam's almost as old as she was when they first met, but now her hair falls down to her shoulders. He misses her bob sometimes, and the spiky bed-head look she wore for a while, but this is good too. She grows more beautiful to him as the years go by.

He reads the newspapers every day, scanning through tabloids as well as broadsheets. When he was first cloned he believed that if he read them closely enough he'd be able to find hints of some Plan to Destroy Earth and warn the SGC. Now it's just habit, and Sam snickers at him as she reads her science journals; he thinks she's cute when she snickers and doesn't complain.

While he's seen his (old) name in print a couple of times over the years, it's a terrible shock to see it in the obituary column.

His first thought is of the other Sam, how devastated she must be. The second is how terrible the grainy photo of him is, and couldn't they have chosen one that did (does) him justice? Then he realises that he doesn't even know if the other Sam and Jack were ever together. That hurts, for a moment.

He doesn't hide the paper from Sam - that would be wrong - but he doesn't have the time to finish it over breakfast, so he folds it up carefully and takes it with to work with him.

Maybe he should feel liberated, now that he's not the other O'Neill any more. Things is, he hasn't been the other O'Neill for years - he's Greg Maitland (stupid name, but hey), chief of a fire station and devoted husband of a gorgeous blonde.

He's still wondering if General O'Neill ever found happiness when he throws the newspaper into the trashcan under his desk at work. Then he sighs and starts drawing up next month's duty roster.

He has more important things to worry about now.


End file.
